Ladies and Gentlemen, distinguished guests, esteemed colleagues, current and future leaders.
My friends, mo chairde, moi przyjaciele, in Royal Hillsborough this evening, I stand humbly among you as Kings and Queens.
It is my great honour to speak on behalf of this year’s Fellows and to capture some of our collective and personal experiences from the Centre for Democracy and Peace Fellowship Programme.
To Eva, the Centre for Democracy and Peace team (Zac and Nicole), its advisory board, corporate sponsors and partners, this evening is for you; to celebrate your initiative that stands as a beacon of hope, championing the values of democracy and peace, no matter the challenge.
It takes a village to raise a leader, we Fellows have felt the amazing support of: Allstate NI, Camlin Group, FinTrU, Fujitsu NI, NIE Networks and Ulster Carpets. Also, the Irish Department for Foreign Affairs and the Irish American Partnership.
You’ve shown you are invested in every way with your belief in the programme and in us as Fellows by your very presence and commitment during the Fellowship programme. Thank you all.
Fellows, as individuals we came to this Programme with a desire for a common good.
This evening, we graduate as one group, in active pursuit of that common good.
We Fellows came to the programme as leaders in our own fields.
The Fellowship programme further developed our potential, individually and collectively revealing, unlocking and releasing new qualities.
Qualities such as:
- The ability to take up space, while sharing and creating space for others.
- To speak with the courage of a lion’s roar, with capacity for great kindness, compassion and understanding.
- To apply broader critical thinking, rather than narrow judgement and to embrace curiosity.
The spirit of possibility is the central theme of the Fellowship Programme.
For us Fellows, the power of possibility has been imbued into each of our spirits, permeating us permanently.
You will know the old saying: there are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.
For us Fellows, the last seven months we have begun to experiment with our destiny: opening new chapters, new beginnings and new horizons in all our lives. Keep on keeping on.
There was a sort of alchemy that brought this cohort of Fellows together and has forged lasting friendships, peer support, alliances, mentorships and, yes, bro-mances.
How far we have come since the launch in Stormont. We have been treated so spectacularly along the way.
There is polish proverb that describes the hospitality we have received: “A Guest in the House, is God in the House.” We have been treated as gods, and here this evening, treated as royalty.
We’ve enjoyed rigorous engagement, immersive experiences, particularly in Oxford, Dublin, and in Belfast in the Culloden, Allstate and FinTrU head offices and Stormont with busloads and busloads of laughter.
As Fellows, we were exposed to diverse perspectives, and our perspectives have certainly widened, particularly with keynote addresses from Lord Alderdice, Daniel Greenberg, Ciarán Ó Cuinn, Elin Burns and Tim Collins, to name a few.
During the programme Tim Collins reminded us, and again this evening, how the Good Friday Agreement has produced lasting peace, a precious thing.
We painfully observe just how fragile our peace and democracy are, here and across the globe.
It is this fragility that highlights the importance of the Fellowship programme: to nurture future leaders.
The Fellowship programme has shaped us to be:
- Leaders, who lead with integrity and not populism:
- Leaders, who chose friendship over enmity,
- Leaders, who lead by hope and not fear.
Indeed, leading with integrity, friendship and hope are our abiding takeaways from the Fellowship.
Sometimes a poignant poem can convey more than a person can say.
Fellows, you will remember our poetry session with Phyllida Hancock, in the Warrington Room in Harris Manchester College, Oxford, so I would like to leave you with a poem by Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy.
It was chosen as there are many overlapping themes with the Fellowship programme:
- Firstly, it is the generosity of the Centre for Democracy and Peace team, its advisory board, corporate sponsors, partners, supporters and alumni in your coming back to foster peace and prosperity here by supporting us as current and future leaders.
- Secondly, that we as Fellows and alumni may be challenged between what is right for the individual versus what is right for the group.
- Finally, we must all learn to navigate mighty sea-changes, with a determination rooted in hope.
The Cure at Troy, by Seamus Heaney
Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.
History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
So, my esteemed friends, tonight let’s commit to work and hope for a great sea-change.
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
And lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky.
That means, that means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
Thank you.
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